Dance of the Self

This extract from parallel journeys by Anu Mazumdar, captures the intense and inner experience of dancing.

She walked up and stood in the center. She realized then that her panic button had been switched off. She felt an alignment with all the space around her. There was an unmistakable feeling of order. A very quiet and fine pulsation was dancing inside her. This place had been built with love, she realized. She felt grateful to be there. She wanted her dance to match this intent.

‘Your turn,’ said Christine as the announcements ended.

A light fell in the center of the circle like a column. She walked up to it and stood at the edge. She placed her feet on the rim that held together both light and darkness.

She closed her eyes.

Then in one cycle of breath, she stamped the ground and swung her arm out of the darkness and pierced into the light. She was in. She was inside herself. Here, there were no more confusion.

Her movements were like a gait of power. Each gesture a prayer, an intense call for light to break in.

Suddenly a veil snapped within. Her body grew into rhythm, like a drum. It rippled out of her feet, in the column of light. She felt her movements expand and grow limitless. Each fragment of time swelled to eternity. She was dense with power, fluid with light. The speed increased and the pulsation of her body spread over the whole amphitheater. The silence of her body dictated its words.

She looked up and saw the stars seeping in through the arching network against the sky. She was flooded with love. She could touch every single person in that packed amphitheater. She saw them all like points of light. Inside each bone and muscle she saw herself. In each atom there was a god.

The lights went out.

The darkness hung in a breathtaking silence. Under the wide arc of the night sky the auditorium surged like a great sea, rippling with starlight, in an immense intimacy of silence.

A voice rang out from the audience.

‘Maitreyi, why did you dance?’Who had dared to speak?The lights went on, on her again. She could not see anything in the darkness in front.

The voice said again: ‘Maitreyi, I ask – Why did you dance?’She could vaguely make out a head.She answered slowly…‘Not for the sake of the dance is the dance dear to us, but for the sake of the Self, the soul.’

She could hardly believe she was actually saying that.

‘Tell me, Maitreyi, what do you see?’She closed her eyes.‘I see a thousand points of light.’‘Thank you, Maitreyi,’ the voice whispered back. ‘My felicitations.’She could feel a smile reach and touch her.There was a roar of applause. Maitreyi heard nothing…